Mark Keown

A student asked me this very good question the other day and so I thought I would put some thought to it. The problem we have as Christians is that we work in a certain degree of circularity. We argue that the Bible points us to God and then determine who God is from the document. Can we therefore make the claim that the Bible is the Word of God? For me, it is a cumulative argument like so many theological arguments i.e. no one argument proves it, but the sum-total of a set of arguments points strongly in this direction. Having said that, it has to be conceded that this like so much of what theologians and philosophers postulate is not able to be proved totally in an emperical sense. Rather, it is a one faith-based conclusion to a set of thoughts. 1. The Bible's Self-Witness: There is no statement in the Bible that says that the whole Bible is the Word of God but there are a series of statements in which the Bible says things of itself that point in this direction. For example, Pau...

One of the questions facing our age, is what is a marriage. A theology of marriage is desperately needed at present. The civil union, defacto and homosexual relationships phenomenon brings this to the fore. In the good old days (were there any really?) in western society, marriage was easily defined. When two heterosexual people wanted to 'become one' they went through a civil union often in a religious context. Defacto and homosexual relationships did occur but were frowned upon. Civil unions were nowhere to be seen. Marriage was safe in its cultural context. Now we are faced with essentially three forms of cohabitation: traditional marriage, civil unions and defacto relationships. This raises the question for me, what is a marriage in Christian terms? Are civil unions and defacto relationships actually forms of marriage or are they non-marital sinful relationships? Many evangelicals, I believe working from their Christendom mindset, automatically believe them to be non-marria...